100 years ago, on November 28, 1909, in New York City, Sergei Rachmaninoff himself performed the first performance of his Third Piano concerto, a work of brooding beauty and complexity. The New York Herald predicted that “it will doubtless take rank among the most interesting piano concertos of recent years," but that "its great length and extreme difficulties bar it from performances by any but pianists of exceptional technical powers.”
On Saturday evening in Jordan Hall, the brilliant 29 year-old British pianist, Philip Edward Fisher, will demonstrate just the sort of exceptional technique the New York Herald critics referred to a century ago. Rehearsals have been thrilling; a chance for great collaboration between Fisher, conductor Jonathan McPhee and musicians of the LSO.
McPhee has paired the Rachmaninoff with Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 4,"The Inextinguishable" a work that was premiered only seven years later in 1916. Nielsen himself described this monumental piece as “a sort of symphony in one movement, which is meant to represent all that we feel and think about life in the most fundamental sense of the word, that is, all that has the will to live and to move.”
Following the performance, Fisher will be on hand to sign his newly released CD. For tickets and information, go to www.longwoodsymphony.org
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